Steve Cartisano features in Netflix’s Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare as the founder of a teen camp that purported to rehabilitate errant teenagers through torture. Cartisano was forced to shut down the center after one of the participants died of heatstroke in 1990 during a hike across the Utah desert. 

Steve Cartisano died of a heart attack after battling colon cancer for four years

Steve Cartisano died in May 2019 of a heart attack in Durant, Oklahoma. Cartisano spent the last four years of his life battling colon cancer. Remarkably, Cartisano opened other therapy camps in the United States after the closure of his first therapy boot camp. After retirement, he became an active Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints member.